Search This Blog

Loading...

Friday, March 27, 2015

Boris: Amplifier Worship

BORIS: AMPLIFIER WORSHIP (1998)

1) Huge; 2) Ganbou-Ki; 3)
Hama; 4) Kuruimizu; 5) Vomitself.

Well, the band's second album is like an ocean
of diversity compared to their first — which, of course, does not say much and
could even be construed as a direct insult, because diversity is the last thing
which Boris care about. Do not worry too much, though: the very first track
(ʽHugeʼ), going on for nine minutes, basically sounds like a small handful of
samples taken from the first albums of Black Sabbath and looped into an endless
serpent-monster of a «composition». Ever wished, enchanted by Tony Iommi's
tone, that any of the songs on Master Of
Reality could go on forever and ever and ever, just pummeling and pummeling
your senses with that merciless hellish roar? Your wish has been granted.

Somewhere around the middle of the second
track, though, the band sort of wakes up and begins crawling out of its shell —
the tempo picks up, the drums gain in complexity of pattern, and the guitar
gains in color, adding some light to darkness and switching from a «psycho-metal»
mood into «astral» mood, eventually quieting down and beginning to explore the
benefits of subtlety. In fact, by the time we get to ʽKuruimizuʼ, Wata's
multi-tracked guitars have been realigned to a «peaceful», «becalmed» way of
droning, a lullaby-like mode of functioning where the listener is gently rocked
to and fro in a cradle of softly gurgling guitars, suspended on a friendly,
reliable bassline. Do not make the mistake of going to sleep, though, or the
suitably titled ʽVomitselfʼ will wake you up with quite a bit of a nasty shock
— the 17-minute «grand finale» that completes everything that ʽHugeʼ left
promised, but unfulfilled, and does indeed sound like 17 minutes of a guitar
that tries to «vomit itself». Not a pleasant experience, but if you let your
ears get adjusted to this, the
wildest of Jimi Hendrix improvisations will sound like Johann Strauss Jr. in
compari­son. Always leave some space for heavy aural exercise, and you'll be
war-trained in no time, ready to take on the sonics of the world like a real man.

Musically speaking, there is nothing whatsoever
going on here that deserves specific attention: most of these feedback tricks
and minimalistic guitar riffs had been in active use since the early 1970s. But
since we're talking musical minimalism here, this is not relevant — what
matters is that they take these little bits of Black Sabbath and Hawkwind and
God knows who else, put them under the microscope, dissect them, recombine
them, and stretch them out for miles and miles, assuming that it is only like that that one can really assess their
true potential. Take ʽSweet Leafʼ, chop out everything but its main riff, slow
it down a bit, then loop it for 15 minutes, and what you get is Boris. (Oh,
they also have some screamed vocals here, but they are totally unne­cessary —
every track here would work better without voices). Yes, I can actually see
where it could make a certain sense.

On the positive side, there is a little less
high-pitched metallic feedback here — only the last two minutes or so make my ears
bleed, compared with about 15 minutes at the end of Absolutego, so you could say they are now taking it less heavy on
the listeners. On the negative side, any attempt to compromise, even the
slightest one, threatens to turn Boris from a bunch of weirdo iconoclasts into
a bunch of boring wankers (who they are,
deep down in essence, but the aggressively mini­malistic approach helps take
the focus away from that fact). I have no idea which choice suits me better,
but since I can hardly expect any particularly elevated emotional response to
this band's brand of elastic psychedelia altogether, I am not exactly losing
sleep over the issue.